The Hardest Step
by Mrs. HopeEstheim
Summary: Over many years, Fairy Tail has lost a few of their own...but some losses are harder than others. One-shot/Tragedy/Death!fic


_Why on earth do I do things like this to everyone?_

_You have my apologies in advance._

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><p>When her breath quickened and inhaling became exceedingly painful and everything she saw was indistinct, she knew she was about to die.<p>

Oddly enough, she accepted it—welcomed it, in fact. She had known for a long time now that she'd have to die someday, and that it would most likely be in a somewhat painful and rather anticlimactic way. After all, that's how she had lost so many friends...no, that wasn't right. After all those years together, they had been her family.

She coughed and tasted a familiar metallic bitterness.

Everything was going slowly numb, and she wondered, not for the first time in the last several moments, if this is what it felt like to die. And if it was, she reasoned, she'd be with her _family_ again soon…wherever they were now. All of those that had been lost in one fight or another over the last ten years…she'd get to see them, to be with them, _forever. _There was no better reward for giving her all and still failing, she decided. They were all she had had for years, and they were all she needed for eternity.

But dying here meant she'd leave her close family behind, too. The man she'd fallen irrevocably in love with and ended up marrying, and the children they'd had together…wouldn't they miss her just as she had missed all of her other family when she lost them?

The tell-tale tickle on her cheeks was strange, because she didn't really feel anything. She didn't want to leave her family, that was true, but the numbness was everywhere and she reasoned that it wouldn't hurt anymore and she wouldn't feel the strange sort of nothingness if she would just hurry up and die. But…she was crying, so somewhere in her subconscious she still felt. And she still had enough of her wits about her to want to _know_ what she was feeling.

"…via!" a haggard voice came from somewhere nearby. She recognized it, but she didn't know how. Dimly, the dying woman realized that the other figure had been running, and was calling her name. It was a woman's voice. But her name stuck, and realization dawned. Slight feeling came back, and she could feel the pain again. Now she understood just why her subconscious had been screaming in agony when she herself hadn't felt anything at all.

_So that's why I'm crying, _she mused as she tried to make out the indistinct figure. _I don't want to leave them alone like I was, before I found Fairy Tail. Before Lucy and I became friends, before I joined the guild, before everything that's happened since, I didn't have anything. I don't ever want my children to be the same person I was before I met their father. Before I was…saved._

That was the reason, then. And the blue-haired woman felt like she had known it from the start. After all, Fairy Tail had saved her, and everyone else, so it was no wonder that so many had died to save the guild itself. Wherever they were, if something threatened to hurt anyone in the family, the guild members would stream back in ever-growing numbers to stand up and fight. That was how the current master had lost his grandfather and the guild had lost the only parent that most had ever known. It was how the youngest fire mage had lost his father and his idol…how her husband had lost his best friend, her best friend had lost a loving husband and father to their unborn child, and the guild had lost their brightest flame.

And while she dreaded leaving her children without a mother, she knew that the guild would take care of both of them…and of her husband.

As her consciousness faded at last and she took just one more shuddering breath, the last things that crossed the water mage's mind were the faces of her beloved Gray, their daughter of four, and their son of seven.

When the figure reached her and dropped to her knees, her skillful hands felt, in vain, for a pulse. After a few tries, her hands began to shake, and finally the young woman let out a mournful wail. The roar echoed around the crumbling ruins of one of Magnolia's many warehouses and through the streets, and Wendy Marvell slumped forward and began to cry. She cradled the older woman's head in her lap and mourned the loss of a family member, just as she had done too many times before. She couldn't even answer Warren's inquiries about who it was or what had happened and knew he'd be sending someone to check up on her.

And that was the way she remained until one of the three people she least wanted to see arrived and froze in his tracks, tears of disbelief welling in his eyes and then overflowing. Several long moments passed, filled with a cloying silence, until finally he started to walk slowly towards the young dragonslayer and the woman she had been too late to save.

Warren's voice flowed through their minds again, and this time she couldn't help but hear the words as he asked, "_Gray, are you there yet? What's happened_?"

He dropped to his knees beside her and stared at her in shock. His hand shook when he reached out to touch her pale, porcelain cheek. The chill had already begun, and Wendy watched as the shock and disbelief turned into despair and agony. The sight made her tears renew and she could scarcely watch as Gray lifted his wife from Wendy's lap and cradled her limp form. His entire body started to shake.

"…There's one casualty," he choked out, and Warren's next inquiry came out quickly and garbled and all either party could understand was that he was asking who it had been. And Wendy watched the mourning husband come completely undone as he responded, "Get Asuka to take Livia and Silver to the river for a while. I don't…I don't want them to see her like this."

"_Wait…it's not…Juvia?_"

And the little dragonslayer looked away, this time unable to watch as one of her most respected family members fell apart. Wendy could barely stand to hear him break down beside her, and she felt so incredibly _helpless_ because there was nothing she could do, nothing she knew to say, and she _hated_ it. But then the young woman found a solution as she stumbled to her feet and turned her back on the scene.

Wendy found her voice and managed, just barely, to choke out, "Just…just do what he says, Warren. Have Asuka take them out to the river, and let us know when it's safe to…to bring her home."

As soon as the words left her lips, she glanced back over her shoulder and regretted it instantly because she was just in time to see Gray, one of the strongest people she knew, completely _shatter_. The rigid self-control he'd been exercising over his emotions completely disappeared and the heartrending cries of a man who had lost half of himself erupted at last. And while Wendy acknowledged, as a healer who'd seen this many times, that being able to cry was one of the stages of acceptance for most people, it still made her heart crumble. She dropped to her knees again, unable to hold herself up any longer.

As he held her in his arms, he felt her loss even more acutely. Gray had never loved anyone as much as he had loved her—no, as much as he _still_ loved her. Juvia was the only woman he had been able to imagine the rest of his life with, for many years now, because she had never given up on him. She was the most supportive person in his life, next to Natsu, and she was the only reason he'd been able to move on with his life when they had lost Natsu in battle eight years earlier. Now he was going to be expected to pick himself back up off the floor on his own, from the biggest blow he'd ever taken, and he didn't understand how.

He felt her hair brush across his arms and it hit him that he wouldn't ever feel that again. She couldn't tease him by turning her body to water to evade him, and she wouldn't ever cheat on her night to do the dishes again. She wouldn't entice him into the bedroom when Lucy was taking care of the kids because she was lonely without Natsu and still couldn't admit it. And perhaps what hit him hardest of all…he wouldn't hear Juvia telling him that she loved him ever again. He remembered a time when he wished that she would just shut _up_, but now he would give absolutely anything to hear her say it just once more.

And so he did it for her.

Gray drew his wife's form nearer and murmured, "I love you, Juvia," just one more time.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but eventually Warren's subdued voice announced that Asuka and the two children had arrived at the river, along with Bisca and Alzack. Gray sat still for a few moments as Wendy formed some sort of satisfactory answer. And then he remained sitting for a few moments longer, until the young dragonslayer gently put her hand on his shoulder.

"We should go," she said softly, her voice still choked from her own tears. Gray didn't trust himself to speak, so he merely nodded and allowed her to help him up with his wife in his arms. As he stood to his full height, he knew that this walk to the guild would be the hardest he had ever made.

And then he took the first and hardest step of all.

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><p><em>You're lucky I stopped there. I had three more paragraphs that I deleted, and more planned. But if it was hurting me to write them, I wasn't going to put you through it. I may make another chapter, but that is by no means certain. I was going to detail the walk back to the guild, the citizen's eyes on them as they walked through the streets, and the hero's farewell that the guild would give her...but I didn't.<em>

_Also, a few of the others that had already died at the beginning of this fic were Master Makarov, Macao, and Natsu. I mention them, ghost over them, and left it up to you to interpret until now._


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